Great Jewish Minds series at Jewish Film Fest

They say great minds think alike, but great Jewish minds have unique ways of understanding the world.

2 minute read.

Hannah Arendt: The Movie 370.
(photo credit: Courtesy PR)

They say great minds think alike, but great Jewish minds have unique ways of
understanding the world. That’s certainly the impression the films in the Great
Jewish Minds section of the 14th Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival give. The
festival runs from December 10-14 at the Jerusalem Cinematheque and features the
best of Jewish-themed contemporary films from around the
world.

Documentaries are always a strong category, but this year they are
particularly so.

The Great Jewish Minds series, which consists of five
films about artists and intellectuals who have shaped modern life, gives
fascinating glimpses into their lives. Several of the directors will be on hand
to discuss their films with audiences.

Brigitta Ashoff, who will attend
the festival to present her film, Susan Sontag – The Glamour of Seriousness, was
granted rare access to her subject after Sontag was diagnosed with cancer for
the third time. Sontag was unusual in that she was an intellectual and writer
who gained a wide following, and Ashoff recorded their conversations as Sontag
reminisced about her life and work. The film also features interviews with many
of Sontag’s friends and colleagues.

Director Renata Schmidtkunz will also
attend the festival to present her documentary, Landscapes of Memory – The Life
of Ruth Kluger. Kluger is a writer and literary scholar at the University of
California, Irvine, and she survived the death marches from Vienna when the
Nazis invaded. The film explores how her life has informed her
work.

Theodor Herzl continues to fascinate historians, and Richard
Trank’s film, It Is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl, (produced by Rabbi
Marvin Hier), details how the Dreyfus trial inspired Herzl to come up with the
idea of creating a modern Jewish state. Narrated by Academy Award winners Ben
Kingsley and Christoph Waltz, the film shows the price Herzl paid for following
his dream, a vision which seemed initially seemed so
implausible.

Margarethe von Trotta, an acclaimed filmmaker known for such
movies as The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum and Rosenstrasse, has made a feature
film about Hannah Arendt’s life, entitled simply, Hannah Arendt. Barbara Sukowa
plays Arendt around the time that her article on Eichmann, in which she coined
the phrase, “the banality of evil,” was published in The New Yorker. The article
stirred up a great deal of controversy, and the film focuses on how that
controversy affected her life and changed her outlook.

Sam Ball has made
the documentary, Joann Sfar Draws from Memory about Sfar, who has published over
150 graphic novels.

These include the 2011 book The Rabbi’s Cat, which
was based on the story of his grandmother’s life in Algeria in the Twenties. The
novel was made into an animated film. Ball accompanies Sfar on a regular work
day in which the author/artist is constantly sketching everyone he meets,
including taxi drivers, waiters and passersby, and speaks about his creative
process.Tickets to these films are selling quickly, so buy tickets in
advance.

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